When you want to get your music and movies on one computer to another computer across the house, or to your phone or tablet across the globe, you need a solid, feature-filled media server to do the job right. Maybe it needs to transcode your video for you before streaming it, or maybe it just needs to give you fast and clean access to your files. Whichever you prefer, you had plenty of nominations when we asked you which tools were the best for the job. Then we looked at the five best desktop media servers, and put them to an all-out vote. Now we're back to feature the winner.

If you want to get your downloaded movies or music from one computer to a screen or another…
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Plex took the top spot by a wide margin, bringing in over 62% of the overall vote. It's no surprise—it was the most popular in the call for contenders as well, with most of you praising its speed, reliability, on-the-fly transcoding, mobile apps, and cross-platform availability.

Behind it in second place was the PS3 Media Server, which does so much more than just stream to PS3s, with 19% of the votes cast. In third place with 11% of the vote was newcomer Serviio, which many of you liked for its cross-platform options and broad device support. In fourth place with 4% of the vote was PlayOn, and bringing up the rear in fifth (surprisingly!) was Subsonic, netting just under 4% of the votes cast.

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The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!